language - final Flashcards
(45 cards)
1
Q
power of human language
A
- communicated info quickly
- facilitates interactive social network
- stores knowledge outside individuals
- allows wisdom to accrue over generations
- refers to any time or place, real or imaginary
- enables creative expression due to generatively and compositionality
2
Q
phonemes
A
- smallest unit of speech
- different in each language (tonal, clicking sounds, pronunciation)
- 10-150 per language
- language specific rules for combining (phonology)
3
Q
morphemes
A
- smallest unit that signals meaning
- combination of phonemes
- prefixes, suffixes, roots, or entire words
- thousands per language
- language specific rules for combining (morphology)
4
Q
words
A
- smallest stand-alone units of meaning
- combinations of one or more morphemes
- many many per language
- language specific rules for combining (syntax)
5
Q
phrases
A
- organized grouping of one or more words
- play role in grammatical structure of a sentence
- limitless number
- syntax
6
Q
sentences
A
- a set of words/phrases that tell a complete thought
- can express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command, suggestion
- limitless number
- can be combined to form larger linguistic units (paragraphs)
7
Q
generativity of language
A
- we combine words in novel ways to express novel ideas
- language learning cannot be based solely on imitation, association, and reinforcement
- must learn grammar
- must be determined by an inborn biological program
8
Q
grammar
A
rules for language structure :
- morphology : rules for combining morphemes into words
- syntax: rules for combining words into phrases into sentences
9
Q
semantics
A
how meaning is derived from morphemes, words, phrases and sentences
10
Q
phrase structure
A
- each word is assigned a role
- generative grammar: rules specify what orders and combinations these roles can occur in
11
Q
problems with relying on phrase structure alone
A
- one phrase structure, two meanings : the shooting of the hunters was terrible
- two phrase structures, one meaning : the boy hit the ball, the ball was hit by the boy
12
Q
surface structure
A
phrase structure that applies to order in which words are actually spoken
13
Q
deep structure
A
fundamental, underlying phrase structure that conveys meaning
14
Q
transformational grammar
A
rules that transform among surface structures having same deep structure
15
Q
ambiguity
A
- examples of language with multiple interpretations
- like illusions for perception, ambiguity can provide insight into cognitive processing of language
16
Q
lexical ambiguity
A
- when a word has two different meanings
- ex. he was bothered by the cold
ex. Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses
17
Q
syntactic ambiguity
A
- when same words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
- ex. they are cooking apples
18
Q
lexical and syntactic ambiguity
A
- lexical but not syntactic : she noticed the part ( 1 phrase structure, 2 word meanings)
- syntactic but not lexical: i saw the man with the binoculars ( 2 phrase structures, 1 word meaning)
- syntactic and lexical: we saw her duck (2 phrase structures, 2 word meanings)
19
Q
referential ambiguity
A
- when same word/phrase can refer to 2 different things within a sentence
- ex. john grabbed his lunch, sat on a rock, and ate IT
- ex. susan told elizabeth that SHE had to write a paper
20
Q
phonemes
A
actual sounds : phones
perceived sounds : phonemes
-multiple phones are head as the same phoneme
- evident by 6months of age
21
Q
challenges in learning morphemes/words
A
- detecting words in a stream of speech
- figuring out riles for combining morphemes to make words
- figuring out what words mean
22
Q
past tense acquisition (3 stages)
A
- stage 1 : small number of irregular verbs (came, got, gave, looked, needed)
- stage 2: learns -ed rule (roll- rolled), regularization (pop- popped), and over regularization (give-giver
- stage 3 : corrects over regularization ( give - gave)
23
Q
mental lexicon
A
- associating words together
ex. chair to table, to table leg, to human leg
ex. chair to sofa to cushion to comfy position
24
Q
universal grammar
A
- poverty of the stimulus : children are not exposed to enough examples to learn grammar without a head start
- we have a hard-wired language acquisition device
- all languages follow same general rules, with different parameters
- learning a language requires learning parameter settings
25
statistical pattern recognition
- children are able to learn grammar solely from examples
- general machinery in brain for detecting patterns is sufficient to learn rules of language as we actually practice them
26
speech production
- fundamentally a motor act dependent on hierarchical planning
- depends on pre-frontal areas
- broca's area : left hemisphere only
27
broca's aphasia characteristics
- speech is laboured, slow and confluent with awkward articulation
- phonemic errors
- written output shows same errors as speech
- better fluency for memorized phrases
- singing may be more fluent than speech
- comprehension is relatively spared
- problems with language planning and production, not motor
28
broca's aphasia speech barriers
- greatest difficulty with verbs, articles, pronouns
- no verb inflection
- responses make sense but are ungrammatical
- poor syntax comprehension
- poor at judging grammaticality
- difficulty reading and producing function words
- problems with understanding and using syntax
29
speech comprehension
- fundamentally a perceptual process
- depends on the ventral 'what' stream
- wenicke's area: in left hemisphere only
30
Wernicke's aphasia characteristics
- speech is phonetically & grammatical normal but meaningless
- generally fluent, unlabored, well articulated
- normal intonation
- words used inappropriately, or nonsense words
- meaning expressed in roundabout way
- comprehension is severely impaired
31
- Wernicke's aphasia speech barriers
- problems translating auditory input into phonological forms that can then access semantics
- problems with language comprehension
- problems with understanding and using semantics
32
left vs right hemispheres
- left hemisphere can name objects, right cannot
33
handedness
- right handed : 70-90%
- left handed: ~10%
- cross-dominant/mix handed: ~20%
34
language lateralization
- right handed: 95% left hemisphere dominant, 5% right hemisphere dominant
- left handed: 70% left hemisphere dominant, 15% right hemisphere dominant, 15% bilateral
35
prosody
- right hemisphere
- intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm
- used for emotion state, form (statement, question, or command), irony or sarcasm, emphasis, contrast, focus
36
aprosodia
- difficulty processing prosody
37
productive aprosodia
monotonic, robotic speech lacking emotion, associated with damage to R hemisphere, Broca's equivalent
38
receptive aprosodia
- difficulty detcting and understanding emotion tone in speech
- associated with damage to R hemisphere Wernicke's equivalent
39
localization and distribution of processing
- broca's area (syntax & planning for production)
- Wernicke's area (word perception & semantics)
- sensory cortices ( auditory cortices for speech)
- motor cortices (motor cortex for speech)
- association cortices (semantics)
40
sources of information
- genes (info learned on timescale of evolution)
- past experience
- internal state (info learned on timescale of current episode)
- environmental context (info learned now)
- proximal stimulus (stimulus itself)
41
interactive activation theory
- model of letter and word perception
| - integrates bottom-up and top-down processes
42
Mcgurk effect
isinterpretation due to conflicting stimuli
43
what is an fMRI
functional magnetic resonance imaging
| - measures changes in magnetization, using electromagnetic radiation and nuclear magnetic resonance
44
fMRI
- good spatial resolution (mm)
- ok temporal resolution (sec)
- non-invasive
- low risk (high magnetic field, risks include flying metallic objects, shifting internal metal objects)
45
meaning in the brain
are relationships between concepts basic neural building blocks of meaning?
- concepts are represented by highly distributed patterns of activation across the brain
- perceptual and motor brain areas involved in representing meaning
- association btwn concepts used to predict brain activation for those concepts
